His and Hers Verticals at BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed added two new verticals to its growing stable today, one for women and one for sports.

At the women’s interest vertical, Shift, editor Amy Odell (hired from New York magazine’s The Cut last month) is joined by Jezebel’s Anna North and The Jane Dough’s Hillary Reinsberg. But don’t call them lady-bloggers. According to the introductory post by Ms. Odell, the site aspires to answer questions like, “How can women bridge the gap between our income and our male counterparts’? How can we attain the power we need to make decisions about our own bodies? How can we be taken seriously as we work toward those things while indulging in a little mindless feminine fun, like shopping, reading Us Weekly, or tweeting about how Nicole Kidman looked like a big Vajazzle at the Golden Globes?”

“Sharing posts like this one (ahem!) is a good place to start. Through this shared content — and cat videos — in our Facebook and Twitter feeds we come together around cute stuff and big ideas that are not just about dissatisfaction with the status quo, but more important, shifting it in a new direction. One that allows us to be upset without being “crazy,” sexy without being “slutty,” assertive without being “bitchy,” and eventually, equal in the world.”

The sports vertical (called, simply, Sports) is run by Jack Moore and WSJ writer Kevin Lincoln. It appears to have a very specific (to us, utterly indecipherable) mission, which involves blood oaths. According to its launch manifesto, Sports will use social media to make characters out of players and live-blog games.

“The social web has pulled back the curtain on our protagonists and turned sports into a running communal conversation, argument, and comedy routine. We didn’t know who Mickey Mantle really was off the field until a memoir came out years later. Now Logan Morrison takes to Twitter to tell us that he occasionally likes to pee in his cat’s litter box because “red wine makes [him] loose.” […] Everyone — players and coaches, owners and fans — is involved in this constantly moving and evolving conversation.

Starting today, that includes BuzzFeed. We want to tell you these stories in a way that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you want to share them with your friends. And whenever possible, we’ll be telling you them as they happen with live game coverage — because that’s when you’re talking about them.”